Three years of declining revenues from coal mining in eastern Montana have left the state budget in tough shape, and budget officials said state agencies would have to find ways to trim some $93 million from their budgets.

Four GOP senators declared Thursday evening that they will not vote for a slimmed-down partial repeal of the Affordable Care Act without an iron-clad guarantee that the House will negotiate a comprehensive replacement in conference.

A month after Kansas lawmakers rolled back Gov. Sam Brownback’s tax cuts to help fund public education, the Kansas Supreme Court met Tuesday morning to determine if it was enough to meet every student’s needs.

Santa Clara County’s Family Justice Center, a gleaming, eight-story building in downtown San Jose, is an impressive architectural specimen. It boasts a sunlit glass atrium, a bright and airy cafe, and high-definition displays outside each of its 20 courtrooms. It also came with the hefty price tag of $225 million and 26 years of debt for the court.

Recent progress in forecasting the intensity of hurricanes — which has lagged behind storm track forecasting — could be undermined by proposed cuts in federal funding for tropical weather research, says the retiring chief of a team of U.S. hurricane specialists.

California’s trial courts will see no new funding from the $125 billion budget the Legislature passed Thursday, but with an added $22 million for dependency counsel and the promise to backfill revenue losses from Governor Jerry Brown’s driver’s license initiative, the judiciary could have made out a lot worse.

Social service organizations that haven’t been paid in over a year due to the Illinois budget crisis cannot sue Gov. Bruce Rauner for repeatedly vetoing budget legislation, a state appeals court ruled.

Citing “great concern” about the North Korean missile threat, top brass from the Missile Defense Agency appealed to the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday to approve its $7.9-billion budget request.